


The First Year After the Sisterhood

by celeria



Category: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:56:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeria/pseuds/celeria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the girls return from Santorini, Lena can't help but wonder what their first year without the pants will bring.  Tibby/Brian, Tibby/Lena, mentions of Lena/Kostos and Lena/Leo, about 14000 words. Based primarily on the books.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Year After the Sisterhood

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to mizzmarvel for the beta, especially for a long piece and on such short notice.
> 
> Written for present_pathos

 

 

**It is the future that they bring  
**  
When tomorrow comes.  
-Robert Hossein, Alain Boublil, and Claude-Michel Schonberg

  


But of course, someday never came.

The girls went home and were launched back into their regular lives the minute the plane bumped down at BWI, back into a world of sterile hallways and rapid-fire English and oppressive heat. How different the hot, heavy Maryland air felt from the relaxed breezes off the Caldera at Santorini.

It was Friday. Despite the fact that classes started in less than a week, Lena and Carmen and Tibby all had to go home to pick up and pack up clothes and supplies and packets of Ramen before returning to school. Bee needed no such accoutrements, but then Bee never needed anything. If the airline had lost her duffel bag, which it had not, Bee could have caught a train from New York and gone right back up to Providence. She had graciously agreed to go back to Bethesda with them.

The quiet, wistful mood of their last few hours in Santorini had held them for the flight back, but by the time they landed at Kennedy, caught their connection to BWI, straggled through customs, declared nothing, and made it to the arrivals gate, everyone was feeling tired and snappish. Carmen's hair fell out of its ponytail in hot, sweaty tendrils the instant they walked out of the airport. Tibby had lost her sunglasses somewhere between Greece and their first flight and couldn't stop reminding everyone about her strong emotional attachment to them. Bee cheerfully carried everyone else's suitcases until they walked out through the automatic doors and Lena pointed out how far away the bus pick-up was, and she promptly dumped them on the ground and handed them around to everyone.

On the bus, everyone slept but Lena, who rested her cheek against the enormous glass window and tried to ignore Tibby, who was slumped against her shoulder and blowing wheezy breaths on her skin. She tried to remind herself of the peace they had all felt in Greece, looking out over the water and resigning themselves to the loss of the pants. She tried to hold onto all those feelings: love for her best friends and for Effie. She told herself, again and again, with each swish of Tibby's hair against her arm, that nothing would change just because they'd lost the pants and agreed to let them go.

But all the same, as she looked out the window and watched day turn to evening and tried desperately to readjust to her own time zone, she couldn't help wondering what this year -- their first without the Sisterhood -- would bring.

  


**Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. -Charles Schulz**

  


Nineteen hours into their return home, Lena had decided that no matter what this year would bring, it had to be better than being at home with her parents. For one thing, it was a lot cooler in Providence. Well, not that much, but a little bit. For another, if she were at school right now, she could be eating Cup o' Noodles or Krispy Kreme doughnuts instead of slogging through a late afternoon lunch with her family. For a third, Effie was home, too. She had taken a flight home a day before Lena, which meant that she'd had an extra day to sleep off her jet lag. Her anger at Lena and Tibby and her shame and horror at having lost the pants were gone -- well, mostly, at least on the surface -- and she was fizzy with excitement about leaving for the University of Virginia in two days. UVA was less than two hours away from Bethesda and Lena had a hard time picturing herself at a college so close to home, but if there was one thing she'd learned in almost eighteen years, it was that she and Effie were complete opposites.

They were at Le Vieux Logis, which had what restaurateurs called ambience but Lena called smoke. It was four in the afternoon, which meant that her body felt like it was eleven at night and time to be in bed, far too late to be eating seared scallops over a bed of linguini surrounded by people who looked like they could be her parents' parents. Her mother vacillated between keeping up a stream of excited chatter about all the things Effie could do at college and looking nervously at her daughters, as if to make sure neither of them was planning to slip the other a plate of poisoned food. And her father, who normally loved Le Vieux Logis -- it was exactly the kind of snooty place where he imagined wealthy Americans dined on a regular basis -- didn't have to vacillate at all; he was quiet and almost scowly, no doubt steeling himself, Lena decided, for the shock of having to shell out thousands of dollars a year so Effie could study whatever she planned to study at UVA.

She tried to behave herself as her mother finished up a poetic description of horseback riding and service sororities, or something like that, and turned to her. "How are you feeling, Lena?" Ari asked, sliding a bite of hot smoked fish into her mouth. "Did you and your friends have a nice time in Greece?"

Lena bit back the urge to say something really grumpy and pushy, something to remind her mother that they hadn't gone to Greece just to have a nice time. She weighed the cost of causing a scene at a place like Le Vieux Logis and decided it wasn't worth it. Quite aside from anything else, she was still too sleepy, and Effie was back to giving her nervous glances. "It was nice, Mom," she said, clamping her jaws shut so she didn't yawn her pasta out of her mouth. She wasn't sure what else to say, so she settled for, "But now I'm home."

Effie gradually lost her hunted look as she took a long sip of water. "When do you go back to school?" she asked, her voice sounding just the tiniest bit strained.

Lena almost winced as her dad fixed his scowl on her. "I think I'll go back Tuesday," she said. "Bee already went back up today, so it doesn't really matter when I go."

Her father opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it and turned his grumpy face onto his plate. Ari shot him a pointed look. Lena couldn't be sure, but she also thought her mother might have kicked him under the table. "Will you come home for Thanksgiving?" he finally asked his steak.

"Of course I will," Lena said to the table in general. Her mother beamed, and Effie managed a smile. Her father was still staring at his food, but she thought she saw the corners of his mouth rise just a little bit.

  


**We talked with each other about each other  
**  
Though neither of us spoke  
-Emily Dickinson

  


Tibby spent most of Saturday and a good deal of Sunday in bed. This was difficult, since Nicky and Katherine were clomping through the house playing some game that involved a lot of shouting and jumping, and the new housekeeper had taken the opportunity to clean Tibby's room while she was in Greece. Unfortunately, her idea of cleaning was making piles of clothes, cables, and miniDV tapes all over and around Tibby's bed. Tibby hadn't had the energy to put anything away properly when she got home Friday evening, so she cleared a path to her bed, shoved everything off, and crawled in without even brushing her teeth.

It got easier when Brian came over on Sunday afternoon and, without asking, took off his shoes and climbed under the covers with her. Fortunately, she had gotten up to pee and brush her teeth a couple of times in the last day.

He kissed the side of her neck but barely touched her otherwise. "How was your trip?" he asked.

"Okay," she said, fumbling for his hand. He didn't pull it away, but he didn't let it graze her arm or her wrist the way he normally did. She grabbed it anyway. "We didn't find the pants."

Brian nodded solemnly. "I know," he said, and Tibby remembered the all-too-brief call from the airport in Greece, when he'd asked patient questions and made equally patient noises of sympathy. "I wish you had."

She nodded too. "Me too," she said, and then to her horror, she burst out crying. She tried to tell herself that it was about nothing, she was tired, her room was messy, she and Brian were still trying to figure things out, after all they'd been through this summer; but another reason sneaked in one side of her brain and sat itself smack-down in the middle before she could ignore it: it was Bailey. Tibby remembered the ragged stitches she'd sewn in the pants after the first summer, remembered the pants bagging around Bailey's feet. Even though she had a picture and a movie to remember Bailey by, it still wasn't the same. A picture and a movie had never touched Bailey; the pants had, and now they were gone.

Brian patted her dirty hair on her dirty pillow, but he didn't touch any other parts of her body. For a second Tibby was irritated; he'd known Bailey, surely he'd remember how Tibby had inscribed her on the pants, and why didn't he say anything about her now?

Then she realized. Of course Brian remembered. He remembered all those times they were quiet together, in the first year or so after Bailey had died. And his hand on her hair was slow, almost reserved, because he was leaving it up to her right now.

So she squeezed his hand, touched his arm, and finally pressed the length of her body up against his. No motion, just silent memory. "I miss her," she said. "And I missed you."

  


**If you want art to be like ovaltine, then clearly some art is not for you. -Peter Reading**

  


As it turned out, Leo _was_ spending most of the semester in Rome, but this was the part of the semester that he was not. "My classes don't start until the middle of next month," he explained, his voice ringing from her cell phone as Lena tried to line up her shoes, clear a space on her bed, and set up her computer all at once. "I'll be home until September fifteenth or so."

"That sounds amazing," Lena said. She looked around her dirty little eight-by-ten room and thought how nice it would be to have nearly a month to stay at home and do nothing but paint. "I bet you'll get a lot done."

"I'm really looking forward to it," he said. His voice was warm, animated. He didn't ask her what she'd done in Greece or when she'd gotten back. He didn't know about the pants or Effie or Kostos. Leo was so uncomplicated that Lena found herself yearning for a little bit of that, too. "Would you like to come over and see some of my work from the summer?"

Lena crawled across the bed and switched on her window fan, letting the breeze blow some of her sticky hair away from her shiny face. She thought about all the unpacking she had to do, the list of books and materials she needed to buy for her classes, catching up with Carmen at Williams and Bee just a few miles away at Brown, all kinds of things that needed to be done at once. "Yes," she said. "I'd really like that."

The third-best thing about Leo's house was that it was air-conditioned. The second-best was that he kissed her, in a casual and undemanding way, when he opened the door, ignoring her sweaty hair and stretchy tank top. The best was that he really did have some beautiful work from the summer. "I love this," she said, picking up what could have been a still life, except that in the painting, the pile of dishes and books and brushes was in front of a window, and through the window she could see a street teeming with people. "This isn't Providence, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "No, it's New York. Mom was visiting a friend down there for the weekend and I went with her. I did the sketches there and the painting after I got home."

"I have a friend who goes to college in New York," Lena said. She wasn't sure why. Leo had never asked, and she had never expected him to.

Leo nodded enthusiastically. "It's a great city. There are always so many people going so many places, sometimes they look like they're standing still."

Lena nodded, glancing over an unremarkable painting of a fuzzy cat. She turned to the next canvas and her breath almost fell out of her mouth. "Oh, Leo -- "

"Do you like it?" he asked eagerly, a note of pride and near-reverence in his voice. "It's you," he added unnecessarily.

It was a woman, but painted from an angle that Lena was sure she had never shown him: mostly from the back, head turned partway over her shoulder, eyes and head and chin tilted down. Even though the painting mostly showed the figure's back and shoulders and arms and hair, it was her, unmistakably. "It's beautiful," Lena said, and immediately realized how conceited that sounded. "I mean -- not me -- I mean the --"

Leo laughed, rich and warm. "It's all right," he said. "It's okay. Sometimes I don't even think of her as you. Thank you."

Lena pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks, trying to laugh as well. Of course Leo would think of the painting not as her, but as art. He would think of the figure as separate from Lena, the person. "I mean it," she said. "The painting. Your work. It's beautiful."

"Thanks," Leo said again. "Hey, listen, would you like me to, you know, sit for you? Right now? I've done all this work of you -- I mean, even when you weren't here -- and I thought maybe it would be fair."

She was pleased, knowing that her fingers itched to do a long project after her impromptu vacation, but -- "I didn't bring any supplies or anything."

"You can use some of mine," Leo said immediately. "Mom says I can't take them all with me, they'll weigh a ton."

Lena nodded, remembering Bee staggering out of the airport with all their suitcases and bags, and that was just for a week's vacation. "They will."

She sat down behind his easel, and he sat down on his bed. He took off his shirt but stopped there, the muslin of his loose pants brushing against the bedcovers. "Is this okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "That's fine," she said, picking up a soft pencil to start. After a couple weeks away from drawing and painting, she wouldn't want to leap right back into a full sketch right away. Lena started with his hands, the way the bones flowed into his wrists.

Or at least she tried to. She drew the lines and curves of his fingers. She squinted and frowned. She tried again, drawing over her first lines, darker and harder. She smudged the first couple of attempts with the side of her hand. She wished he had an eraser, even though she knew she was never supposed to erase her work.

She moved to his elbows, his knees. Again, nothing came.

What was wrong with her? He was fully -- okay, not fully, but at least halfway -- clothed this time, and this was certainly not difficult. It was just a drawing. It was just lines. Lena could draw lines. Effie could probably draw lines. Even Tibby's four-year-old sister could draw lines in her sleep.

She tried to keep going, so that Leo wouldn't see her sitting behind his easel and doing nothing, but it all felt wrong. None of the lines flowed together in a way that looked anything like a human body. Finally she put down the pencil. "I'm sorry," she said miserably, looking at the jumble in front of her eyes.

Leo put his shirt back on, walked across the room, and touched her shoulder. He looked at her drawing, but he didn't say a word, which was somehow worse than if he'd tried to say something false and nice. Instead he squeezed her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "Jet lag," he said. "You're tired."

Lena had been back on U.S. soil for four days, but she nodded. It was easier to go with the uncomplicated explanation than to try to figure out what was so wrong with her.

  


**Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years. -Anthony Powell**

  


The first thing Tibby did when she moved into her new dorm room was set up her computers -- her old, faithful iMac and her mostly shiny, mostly new MacBook. The second thing she did was glance down at her vibrating cell phone, read Carmen's name on the display screen, and pick it up. "Hello?" she said, dislodging a pile of blank DVDs.

"Hey, Tib," Carmen said. She sounded funny, but Tibby put that down to going to school in the middle of nowhere, where there weren't many cell phone towers and mountains that got in the way of the few there were. "How's it going?"

"Okay," Tibby said. She eyed her dorm room, not really sure that it was okay. It was nearly as messy as her room at home. She pushed some hangers and a faded hunter-green canvas jacket off her bed. "How's it going?"

"Okay," Carmen echoed, sounding even less okay than Tibby, and her voice changed to a wail. "Tibs ..."

"What? What happened?"

Carmen let out a dramatic sniff. Tibby waited, more or less patiently, for her to get on with it. "I have this new roommate, right, and she's really awful and I don't think she likes me and I'm not sure I like her and what am I going to do if I have to live with her all year?"

Come to think of it, a messy single room suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing after all. Tibby looked around the cinderblock room, immeasurably grateful that there was no second bed and second desk and second person in her room right now. "What's going on, Carma?" she asked. "What's her name?"

"Dana something. Maybe Diana. I don't know. She's a transfer student."

Brian would have been a transfer student, if he'd decided to come to New York for the rest of college. Tibby tried not to let herself think about that. "Well, what's wrong with her? Is she mean? I bet she's mean."

"No." Pause, pause, huff. "She's not _mean_ , Tib. I don't know. She's got these parents, right ..." Carmen's voice faded out for a second, eclipsed by static and the low hum of telephone wire. "... and her mother made her _bed_ for her! Can you believe it? Her dad carried all of her stuff and her mother put the _sheets on her bed_ for her."

Carmen was always the one with the psychoanalysis, but it didn't take a genius -- or Carmen -- to figure out what was going on here. "Oh, Carma," Tibby said, and wished there was something else she could say. She thought about her godson, Carmen's brother. "Oh, Carmabelle."

Carmen sniffled again, but it sounded quiet rather than overdramatic this time. "I mean, I know Mom and David are busy, right? I was supposed to pack up my room and then I went to Greece. They did it for me. That was nice of them, right?"

"Right," Tibby said, not actually sure that it was nice. What would have been nicer would have been if Christina and David hadn't moved to a new house at all, but that ridiculous even for Tibby to expect. "Is your dad still there?"

"No, he went home last night. He carried my stuff too," Carmen admitted.

Tibby laughed and knew then that Carmen and Dana/Diana were going to be all right. "It could be worse," she said.

"What? I could be living with Mom and David and Ryan in a house with a yard?"

"I was going to say you could be living in my house with Nicky and Katherine," Tibby said, "but that works too."

  


**Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you. -Satchel Paige**

  


Lena was pretty used to not seeing Bridget while they were both in Providence. The previous year, when they'd started at RISD and Brown, Lena had called and emailed and invited Bee to come see her at school, and Bee had only made it over once or twice. At first Lena had been hurt, but once soccer season was over and she was deeply immersed in her Experiments in Drawing class, it was her turn to do the same. Now she had friends at RISD, and Bee had friends at Brown, including Aisha, whom she was living with again this year. It was probably better that way, Lena decided. She knew that Carmen, whose jealous streak snapped as often as her desire to turn the clock back ten years so she could be with her friends, would probably think so, too.

So Lena was surprised when Bridget called her on Wednesday and suggested that Lena meet her in town. Mostly she was surprised since she'd assumed that Bee would be completely tied up in soccer and weeklong atonement for missing preseason soccer training camp. And Bee did show up in shorts and a T-shirt, with bright red pressure marks from her shinguards decorating her legs. Her hair was in a ponytail and looked like cornsilk that had been dunked in a swimming pool.

"Have you been here long?" Bee asked when she got to the Meeting Street Cafe and found Lena sitting at a table outside, her feet propped up against a second chair, sketching.

Lena shook her head. "Not long," she said, pulling her feet down so Bee could have a place to sit. That wasn't really true. She had come early, half an hour earlier than they'd agreed to meet, so she could sit and draw in a place that wasn't her room or the campus or Leo's house. It still wasn't working. She covered her sketch of the front of the brick building with her hand and tucked it in her small portfolio. "So what's going on?" she asked in an attempt to distract Bee, which usually wasn't hard.

Bridget scowled a little. "It's Eric," she said. "He called me last night and told me he's staying in Mulege for another month."

"I thought he was already supposed to be down there until the end of September."

"He is. Another month after that. He wants to stay for longer with his grandparents. He's going to help them make some repairs around their house."

"Well, that's ... that's too bad," Lena said. She didn't really think it was too bad. All those years Lena's grandparents had been living by themselves in Oia, Kostos had helped them, and his own grandparents, around their house. But she knew better than to say that to Bee. "He'll come back after that, Bee," she said. "You know he will."

Bee nodded, looking a little ashamed. The flash of irritation on her face was gone as quickly as it had come. "I know," she said. "I guess I just ... I was surprised."

"He's not the only one who can change his plans," Lena felt obliged to point out. "What about the summer you went to Alabama?"

"I know."

"And you guys just came with me to Greece."

"I know, I know."

"And -- "

"O- _kay_ ," Bridget said, annoyed. "Sorry."

"No, I'm sorry," Lena said, feeling guilty. Just because her sketch of the cafe looked like a pile of spaghetti was no reason to take it out on Bee. "You're allowed to be upset."

"But you're right. I know he's coming back. How are you? How's Effie?"

Lena seized on the last question as the easiest to answer, which was the way Effie was. "Good. She went on some kind of camping trip or something with the other freshmen. She had fun. I think she has a boyfriend already."

Bridget laughed. "I'm not surprised," she said. "So you think ... she's okay about Brian and Tibby? She's not mad anymore?"

Lena shrugged. This particular question about Effie was a little harder to handle than most. Until this month, Lena would never have believed that Effie was capable of getting as mad and vengeful as she had when she took the pants. Lena would not make that mistake about her sister again.

  


**Rest in peace. The mistake shall not be repeated. -Inscription on the cenotaph at Hiroshima**

  


The first indication Tibby had that something was wrong was when Brian didn't return her calls. Not the first one; that was no big deal. And not the second, even though he was usually very good about calling her back. But the third and fourth, then she was worried. There might have been a fifth, too, but she lost count.

He did call her back then, but brushed off her concern. "Just busy. The beginning of school and all," he said.

The second indication was when Tibby offered to take the bus down to see him, in the middle of September. She'd been solicitous about it, giving him a couple of weeks to readjust to school, busying herself with her classes, trying _not_ to call him five times in a row, offering to make the trip herself. But he was uncharacteristically vague. "It's not really a good time, Tib," he said.

"Are you sure? It would be next weekend. Do you have something going on?" Tibby asked, trying to sound casual as well.

"Yes."

She waited, but he didn't say anything else. "Are you angry at me?" she asked.

Brian sounded genuinely bewildered. "Why would I be angry at you?"

Tibby sighed. "No reason," she said, wondering whether to believe him or not. He was always so guileless and patient that she couldn't imagine that he was putting her on. But she thought of all the plotlines in soap operas and movies where someone cheated on someone else. Those people always sounded innocent, too, right? She could probably make a movie like that in her sleep. "What about two weekends from now, then?" she asked. "The end of September? Would that be better for you?"

"No," he said with such finality that she was speechless for a minute.

She stared out her window for a while, at the people pouring through the sidewalks, twelve floors down. "Okay," she said, watching them stream past the buildings. "Call me when you figure out a good time."

"Tibby -- " he started to say, but she cut him off with a loud beep as she pushed the button that ended the call.

Then she called Lena. "I'm crazy, right?" she said to her window. "Tell me I'm crazy. I mean, why would Brian do something -- you know, anything -- anything stupid?"

"You're crazy," Lena agreed. "Brian's crazy about _you_."

"He didn't act like he was crazy about me," Tibby argued, even though Lena was telling her exactly what she'd asked to hear. "He acted like ... _nothing_. He didn't tell me why it wasn't a good time. He barely said anything. Lenny, what if ... what if there's ..." She stopped because she didn't want to sound like she was blaming Effie. Effie and, by extension, Lena. "What if he's trying to break up with me now?" she asked, aware of how young that made her sound, but unable to phrase it any differently.

Lena sounded relentlessly practical as she said, "Tibby. He is not breaking up with you. Maybe he's just working hard. He has a scholarship. He has to keep his grades up."

"He doesn't have to work that hard."

"Maybe he's having trouble with some of his classes."

"Brian?"

"Well, it's possible," Lena said. Was it Tibby's imagination, or did she sound irritated? It was an unusual emotion for Lena. Tibby frowned at her window and pressed the phone closer to her ear.

"I think you should give him some space," Lena went on.

"I hate the word 'space,' " Tibby said. She thought about hanging up on Lena too, but Lena was her friend. Lena was on her side, right? "Is this my fault?" she burst out finally. "Because of what I did this summer?"

"You didn't do anything."

"Yes I did. I freaked out."

"Anyone might have freaked out," Lena said. "Brian's not going to stop loving you because you freaked out."

Lena sounded very sure of herself again. Tibby figured that she was probably right, because after all, Kostos had pulled the biggest freak-out of all. But that didn't make her feel any better. She had no interest in reenacting the love story of Lena and Kostos.

  


**Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one. -George Savile, Lord Halifax**

  


Five weeks later, Tibby was about to pull out all of her hair. Brian had continued to call her first, or call her back, and he was as cheerful and supportive as ever, but he rarely said a word about himself, except that he was "busy" and he was going to be "busy" on the weekend too.

"Would you rather come up here?" she asked. She hated to ask him to do that, after their problems this summer, but maybe he wanted to. New York City had to be more fun than College Park.

"I can't right now," he said, but nothing else. She was almost beginning to get used to it. Almost. "Maybe in a couple of weeks."

Tibby bit back an angry reply and could feel herself holding it back. There had been a time when she would have refused to censor it, would have yelled and screamed at whoever she wanted -- her parents, her little brother and sister, even her best friends. She tried not to do that anymore. Her friends, Brian, even her parents were too important to let loose with whatever she felt like saying whenever she felt like saying it. Especially Brian. "In a couple of weeks it'll practically be Thanksgiving," she said, which wasn't exactly true. It was the end of October. There was another month until Thanksgiving. "Brian, what's going on?" she asked, deciding to try the direct, supportive approach. "Can you tell me?"

But he brushed her off as if he hadn't even had to think about it. "It's complicated," he said. "Look, if you can't make it down here before then, I'll see you at Thanksgiving."

She wanted to scream, but instead forced herself to smile. In seventh grade, Carmen had read a magazine article that said if you smiled on the phone, your voice would sound warm. Not angry. She'd badgered the three of them relentlessly about their "smile voices." Tibby slapped on her fakest grin and said, "I'll see you then. Are you coming to my house for Thanksgiving dinner?"

Her smile felt false, but he must have bought it, because he sounded relieved when he said, "That's so nice of your parents. I'd love to come. I'll be in Bethesda in the morning."

"I'd love you to come, too," Tibby said, wondering when he'd started sounding so formal. "Well ... 'bye," she added, almost hoping he'd say something else. Something like, _wait. Don't go yet. I want to see you. I love you._

But all he said was, "See you then."

  


**Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once. -W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman**

  


The first person Lena saw when she got home for Thanksgiving -- Bee didn't count, since they'd taken the train from Providence to DC together -- was her mother. She had to work in the morning, but she'd stayed up late to pick up Lena and Bee from the train station. She was yawning and looked half asleep.

The second person Lena saw was Effie, who looked like she'd had about ten cups of coffee and driven around the city six times in a row. Lena felt her entire face breaking into a grin. "Ef!" she exclaimed when they got close enough for her sister to hear her.

Effie had no such qualms; she shouted, "Lena!" and swept her into a hug so quickly that Lena's suitcase and portfolio went everywhere. Apparently college had not changed Effie at all. Then again, if Effie could get through junior high with such raucous unselfconsciousness intact, Lena figured she was pretty much set for life.

Lena hugged her mother then, while Effie hugged Bee; then Bee hugged Ari, too. They headed out to the parking garage, with Effie chattering a blue streak the entire way. Apparently college was amazing and so much better than high school but she never got to drive anywhere anymore so at least Mom had let her drive into the city but Charlottesville was a much nicer city than DC and it was less busy and she had two papers to edit over vacation so could Lena help her?

"That's not really my thing, Ef," Lena said with a laugh as she hauled her suitcase and portfolio inside the house.

"Oh, please? Please? Whatever you want, I'll do it for you, Lenny. I'll wash your clothes! I'll make you a cheesecake!"

"Why don't you just tell me how everything's going," Lena said as Effie handed her two eight-page papers printed in an impossibly big font. "Do you like being at college?"

Effie nodded, still looking like she might skyrocket through the roof at any moment. "It is amazing. It's so much fun -- except for classes, of course. Especially the ones at eight-thirty. And did I tell you about Jason?"

"Yes," Lena said, laughing, underlining a spelling mistake. "You've told me about Jason."

"I really like him," Effie enthused, dancing rings around Lena's bedroom. "He's going to be a poli sci major. Either that or biology. And he's cute, and he lives in South Carolina ..." She began unpacking Lena's suitcase, throwing things all over the place the way Lena never would. "He's good at art too. I suggested maybe he should be an art person, like you. But he says he's not _that_ good. He says he'd rather do something where he knows he can get a job."

Lena swallowed hard, trying not to glance over at the portfolio of drawings she'd brought home. Some were good. They were the ones from last year. She was tired of looking at them piled in the corner of her room, tired of wondering what had happened to her over the summer. And some were awful. They were the ones from this year. They weren't so bad that she was in danger of failing any of her classes, but they were bad enough that she felt like a failure every time she picked up a brush.

"So things are good for you, Ef?" Lena asked, flipping a page.

Effie nodded. "It's -- remember when I didn't want you to go away to RISD?" she asked. "When you were doing those drawings of us?" Lena nodded, and Effie got uncharacteristically quiet. She came to sit next to Lena on the bed. "Now I see why you wanted to go."

  


**They shall walk, and not faint. -Isaiah 40:31**

  


Tibby had had an afternoon class on Tuesday, so she hadn't left the city until evening, and it was nearly midnight when she got home. She crept into the house quietly, trying not to wake her little brother or sister. She felt like a burglar.

In the silence of her still-dirty room, which was once again full of piles, the first thing she did was text her friends to see if they were free for breakfast the next morning. She smiled as the texts came back. Usually any conversation like this would take place over IM, sometimes between three or four of them at once. But Bee didn't have a computer at home anymore, and Carmen's stepfather was always working from home on theirs, and Lena's father got grumpy if she was online late at night, so Tibby was stuck squeezing her messages into 160 characters.

The next morning, Tibby jumped into Earl, her beloved Pontiac, and headed off to Lena's house, the first stop on the way to breakfast. Her parents kept threatening to sell Earl, since, after all, nobody drove him while Tibby was away at school. Both her mom and her dad had much nicer cars now. Tibby kept refusing, on the pretext that someday she might live someplace where she would need a car, even if she had no intention of living in such a place again.

As she pulled up at Lena's house, she felt a bubble of excitement start in her stomach. It had been three months since her friends had been all together. Good thing her grandma Felicia didn't turn 100 every year.

She knocked quietly, since Lena's father also got grumpy if she did anything early in the morning. Effie let her in, and Tibby was surprised to see her, but it made sense that Effie was home for Thanksgiving too. She tried a cautious smile. "Morning, Effie," she said. "Is Lena around?"

Effie, who had been wearing her bright, welcoming smile to go with her orange and navy blue UVA sweatshirt, acquired a subtly damaged look on her face. "Hi, Tibby," she said. "Lena's upstairs. She's just getting ready."

"Oh ... good," Tibby said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. "So ... when did you get home?"

"Monday night," Effie replied. "I didn't have any Tuesday classes."

"How's college?"

"Good." Effie perked up a bit. "Really great. I love it a lot. I bet you do, too, right? I mean, where you go to school?"

To be honest, Tibby thought, it wasn't so much college that she loved a lot. She could do without the tiny bedroom and sharing a bathroom with twenty other people. What she loved was being away, being on her own. She liked being Tibby, minus the hippie-turned-yuppie parents and siblings who could practically be her own children. She liked walking around the city and getting to know every street, the ritzy and the rough, because every new step made her more of a New Yorker. But those were not thoughts she would share with Effie -- Lena, maybe, but not Effie -- so she just shrugged and said, "Yeah."

Effie nodded eagerly, and then her face became guarded again as she asked, almost hesitantly, "How's Brian?"

Tibby narrowed her eyes at Effie. What was that all about? Lena had told her that Effie had a boyfriend now, someone from school. Why was Effie asking about Brian?

On the other hand, Effie had known Brian for a couple of years now. Maybe she was just asking about him, the way Tibby asked Bee about Eric. Effie certainly knew Brian better than Tibby knew Eric. _Too_ much better, actually.

Effie was tilting her head at Tibby questioningly, so Tibby said quickly, "Fine."

Effie nodded. "Good. I'm glad to hear it. It must be hard on him."

Tibby was back to paranoia again. "It"? "It" what? "It" meaning Tibby? She wasn't sure how to ask without sounding paranoid, so she settled for a casual, "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Effie agreed, slouching against the wall, too. "I don't think I could come home every weekend. I mean, you know, Tibby? It's funny. I thought I'd miss home and everything, but I don't. Or at least, not enough to come home all the time like that."

Under other circumstances, Tibby might have agreed with Effie -- she did agree, actually -- but she was too stuck on the first part of Effie's sentence. "Come home every weekend?" she repeated, hoping that she didn't sound like the most clueless girlfriend ever.

Apparently she succeeded, or Effie just didn't notice, because she went on, "I mean, if my mom was sick, of course I would. I'd _move_ home if I had to. I'm not saying I'd, like, totally ignore her."

Tibby was sure her face was getting whiter and whiter. Fortunately, Lena chose that minute to come down the stairs. "Tib?" she asked, her celery-colored eyes growing wide with alarm. "Are you all right?"

Tibby was seeing spots before her eyes. "Len?" she choked out. "Can you ... can you drive Carmen and Bee for breakfast?"

"Sure," Lena said. She came to the bottom of the steps and tried to touch Tibby's arm, but Tibby was already jerking the door open. "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure," Tibby said. "I'll tell you when I get there."

  


**If equal affection cannot be  
**  
Let the more loving one be me.  
-W. H. Auden

  


She'd only been to Brian's house once or twice in all the time they'd been dating. Actually, Tibby never thought of it as Brian's house, not really. It was his mother and stepfather's house. Brian spent, had always spent, as little time there as possible. For years he'd hung out at the 7-Eleven, and then when he met Tibby, he simply shifted the focus of his afternoons to her.

It occurred to her, as she pulled up and closed the car door with shaky hands, that she didn't even know his mother or stepfather's first names. She'd met them a few times. She didn't know if they remembered her name, or, if they remembered her name, whether they could match a face to it. She didn't know what she was going to say if someone besides Brian answered the door.

But he did, and in an instant, all her shaking was gone and she was angry.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, beating her to the same question.

She threw her canvas bag on the front step and put her hands on her hips. "I could ask you the same thing. What are you doing here every weekend? Is that why you kept telling me it wasn't a good time to visit? Why didn't you tell me?"

It was pretty satisfying, watching Brian's face grow white now, too, as if every single emotion that Tibby had experienced this morning was being funneled into his body. Brian was much taller than Tibby now, but he seemed to shrink as if the past three years were playing out in reverse. Tibby would not have been surprised to see a pair of thick-lensed glasses fall from the sky and bump him on the head.

"Tibby," he said finally, and then closed the door most of the way in her face.

Before she could protest, he was grabbing his coat and calling something to someone in the house, and then he came outside and shut the door firmly, pulling the dark gray jacket around his hunched shoulders. He headed for Earl.

She grabbed her bag and followed him. "Well?" she said. "Where do you think you're going?"

Brian glanced over his shoulder, at his house. "Somewhere else," he said. "Not here."

"Fine," she retorted. She unhooked her bag from her shoulder, threw it in the car, got in, and drove. She found the parking lot of an elementary school and cut the motor with a vicious twist of the key. "Well? Why didn't you tell me?"

Brian let out a long sigh. "Well. You found out." It wasn't a question. "Who told you?"

"Effie," Tibby said. "And believe me, I have plenty to say about that, too. But right now -- what is going on?"

He looked at his hands. "My mom's sick," he said. "Did Effie tell you that?"

Tibby nodded wordlessly. She wasn't mean enough to start yelling at him about his sick mom. "Sick with what?" she asked.

"Lyme disease."

She sat up straight. "But that's treatable, right? Can't you go to the doctor for that?"

"Yeah. It's treatable. But it tires you out, Tibby. She can't work, she can't take care of the house. All she wants to do is sleep, and there's nothing they can do about that."

"Okay." She certainly knew about wanting to sleep and forget about everything else. But -- "Why do you have to be here? Your stepfather has money. He can -- he can hire someone to do everything, or he could take care of her himself."

"It's not that simple."

"Why?" Tibby demanded. "He's the one with money, who wouldn't help you pay for college. So why are you coming home every weekend and probably neglecting all your schoolwork just because he's a, he's, he's ..."

"Yeah, he is," Brian said. "But that's -- he's not the point. It's her. She's my mom."

"So? She's the one who's chosen your stepfather over you all these years. How can you forgive her for that? And how can you stand to live in the house with him? You always said you couldn't wait to leave, and you'd never come back -- "

"Yeah, I did. And I was wrong." Brian fixed her with a look. "I'm not like you, Tib. With my mom -- it's not like it is with your parents."

She felt her mouth go dry all of a sudden. "What -- what do you mean?" she asked, even though they both knew what he meant. She shook her head. "And why didn't you tell me?"

"You know why," Brian said. "This is why."

That stung, even more than his remark about her parents. Tibby stared straight ahead out the windshield at a set of playground equipment painted in garish secondary colors: purple, orange, green. "But you told Effie."

He didn't say anything for a long time, which annoyed her but also piqued the smallest bit of curiosity about what he might possibly say in return to that.

Finally he said, "You're always on my side, Tib. I love that about you." It was close to _I love you_ , but not quite the same thing. It made Tibby's stomach anxious. "But right now I need you to understand this. That's all. Just listen to me and say okay."

For some reason, that broke Tibby's chest into a thousand pieces because it was so unlike Brian. He was usually the unselfish one, the one who loved freely. Now, all of a sudden, what he was asking seemed like a lot more than trading off traveling weekends.

She knew what she should say, what she was supposed to say, but when she opened her mouth to say it, what fell out was, "So you're not dating Effie?"

As soon as Tibby said it, she knew it was ludicrous. Brian was not dating Effie. He would never cheat on her. He loved her. He had been kind and loving and caring all semester so far, and even during the summer when she messed it all up, except -- 

_Except that he had told Effie, and not Tibby, about his mom._

Brian looked at her like she had grown an extra head. "Of course not," he said, and took her hand across the gap between the front seats. "I love you."

She squeezed his fingers, but she couldn't bring herself to say the words back. Instead, she took her hand back and turned the key in the ignition again. "I'd better get you home to your mom."

  


**In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. -Oscar Wilde**

  


After Tibby dropped Brian back at home, she looked down at her cell phone and saw that she had seven messages, three from Lena and two each from Carmen and Bee. Bee had left the last one, so Tibby called her back without listening to the first six messages. "We're at Alice's," Bee said in response to Tibby's "Hi." "Want to meet us here?"

" _Yes_ ," Tibby said gratefully, spinning Earl 180 degrees in the middle of the street and earning some dirty looks and one honked horn. Twenty minutes later she was pulling open the restaurant door and scanning the room for her friends. She finally spotted them in a booth toward the back, with five plates of pancakes between them on the table. "Hi," she said, patting Carmen, then Bee, then Lena last, since she'd already seen her, albeit briefly, this morning. "Is this food all for Bee?"

Bee laughed. "No. These are for _you_ ," she said, handing a plate of strawberry-topped pancakes to Tibby. "So what's going on? Lenny said you ran out this morning like you'd seen a ghost."

"Ah," Tibby said vaguely, not sure where to begin. With the sick mom, so her friends would think she was awful? With Brian's lies, which bothered her a lot more than his sick mom, or even the painful idea of his living at home with his stepfather every weekend? She stuffed in a bite of pancakes first, closed her eyes briefly, and then told the whole story without opening them. She finished up with, "He didn't even _tell_ me. He told Effie -- did he tell any of you?"

They all shook their heads. "But I've been really busy with soccer," Bee said.

"I've been really busy with school and the directing scenes," Carmen said.

"I hate email," Lena said. "But you know, it doesn't matter that he told Effie. Maybe he just needed to tell someone."

Tibby wasn't sure if her friends were actually trying to make her feel better, but they were doing a really bad job of it. "I know," she said patiently, unable to ignore the guilt on Lena's face. She knew that Lena still felt immeasurably guilty about taking sides with Tibby over the summer, even if Lena had insisted up, down, and center that she hadn't. "It's not the Effie part. Forget Effie. It's that -- it's that he didn't tell _me_. He _lied_ all those times I asked if he wanted me to come visit and he said he was busy."

Bee scrunched her face up like a mushroom. "He didn't exactly lie."

"Yes he did," Carmen said. "A lie of omission is still a lie."

Bee made a face at her. "What kind of directing scene are you in? Something about Bill Clinton?"

"It is," Tibby said. "Even if he didn't _not_ tell me, he didn't tell me either."

"He would have," Lena said. "He would have told you eventually."

Tibby snorted.

"He would have," Carmen agreed.

Tibby folded her hands and stared at her pancakes. "I guess so. But after all those things he's told me about his stepfather. And his mother, too. I can't believe it."

"I can," Bee said, and they all looked at her. They all knew about Bee's father. Lena's parents and Tibby's parents and Carmen's multiple parents all had their problems, but for the most part they were there and not likely to go anywhere. Mr. Vreeland, on the other hand, had basically snatched himself inside his body for years after Bee's mom died. "She's still his mother, Tibs."

"I know," Tibby said with a sigh, putting down her fork. She didn't completely understand how she was feeling. Tibby loved her mother most of the time, so it made sense that Brian would feel the same way. On the other hand, Alice Rollins had never sat by placidly while her husband cheerfully refused to pay for Tibby's college education. Tibby could not imagine either her dad doing that or her mom allowing him to. Was it all because Brian had a stepfather? Was that the only difference between their two families?

Tibby sighed again and moved some of the strawberries around on her pile of half-pancakes. "What about you, Lena?" she asked brightly, glancing across the table. "How's everything going with you?"

Three people exchanged pointed looks around the table while Tibby masterfully ignored them. "It's okay," Lena said after a moment. "I'm still having a lot of trouble this semester, though. I don't know why."

"Trouble with what?" Carmen asked, her brow furrowed.

"With art. I'm not sure what the problem is. It's just -- it's -- " Lena spread her hands helplessly in front of her plate. "It's just not working for me."

"Not working for you?" Carmen said in surprise. "I can't believe it, Lenny. Maybe you're having a mental block or something."

"Maybe." Lena poked at her pancakes. "Do you ever get those?"

"No." Carmen turned to Tibby. "Do you? When you're working on your movies?"

"Sure," Tibby said, remembering the ill-fated romance screenplay she was supposed to have been working on all summer. She'd made great strides at the end, after she and Brian had gotten back together, but she'd left it unfinished and let it languish on her hard drive and there was no way she'd ever go back to it now. "But it's gotta be different for you. At least you can look at what you're supposed to be painting."

Lena gave Tibby her best glare, which wasn't much of a glare for anyone else. "It's not that easy."

  


**How you learn that love you lose feels like a gently slamming door  
**  
A door you keep a lock on if you're smart  
-Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler

  


The three weeks between Thanksgiving and the holidays went like a bullet through cottage cheese, and before Lena knew it, the spring semester was starting. She went back to her dorm room a week early, intent on getting some serious painting time before the pressure of new classes kicked in. Even just sketching. She would have given her left ear to produce a decent-looking sketch.

Her mother thought she was being too hard on herself. "You take on a lot of work, Lena, love," she had said over the holidays. "Your grades are good. Your art must be good, or you wouldn't have done so well in your classes." She gestured to the refrigerator, where Lena's transcript from the registrar's office, and now Effie's, was tacked on one of the doors.

Her mother might be right, but that wasn't what Lena wanted to hear. She could paint better than this, she knew she could. It might be good enough to get A's, but it wasn't as good as she wanted it to be. Maybe Carmen was right about the mental block.

Leo had called over the holiday break, too. He was back in Providence and was excited to see her. He had done some worthwhile work in Rome -- "but difficult, too," he said. Lena thought he would probably be in some of her classes, but she was putting off calling him. It wasn't because she didn't want to see his worthwhile, difficult work. She was just afraid that it would be too worthwhile and difficult for her these days.

In desperation, the Friday before classes started, she called Tibby, who was finishing up her January term at NYU. "I need a change of scene," she told her, remembering Leo's lovely still life, the one with the people in the background. "Are you busy this weekend?"

"No," Tibby said. "I have a five-minute short film that's due today. So I can't talk. But why don't you come down late tonight?"

"Thanks," Lena said, switching the phone to her other ear while she dried a brush on an old shirt. "Do you want me to bring anything?"

She got a funny feeling when she said that, and then it hit her; when she'd called Tibby last summer, she'd asked if she could bring anything. Tibby had said a pregnancy test.

Well, there was no chance of Tibby needing a pregnancy test now. To hear Tibby talk these days, Brian didn't exist, never mind go to classes and come home on weekends and take care of his sick mother and call Tibby every week with messages, which stopped short of his saying he loved her.

  


**Most people who make movies are in real life a bitter disappointment. I, on the other hand, am so much better in real life. -Marlene Dietrich**

  


By the time Lena got to New York late on Friday night, Tibby was so exhausted that she wasn't sure she was going to be much company or inspiration for Lena. She had turned in her movie earlier that afternoon, but she was too wiped to even meet Lena at the Port Authority. She told Lena how to take the Eighth Avenue subway downtown to campus.

To make matters worse, Lena was looking ridiculously perky as she took off her pea coat and hat and gloves and scarf. "How did your five-minute movie turn out?" she asked. "Can I see it?"

"Sure. That's nice," Tibby said vaguely, directing Lena toward her MacBook. She meant it. It _was_ nice of Lena to ask about her movie; she just wasn't sure that she could stay awake for even five minutes while Lena watched it. She opened up Final Cut and showed Lena how to play and pause, then stretched out -- "Just for a minute," she promised. Lena turned the volume down low so it wouldn't disturb her.

The five-minute movie was silent, except for the soundtrack. The narrative -- Tibby knew exactly where Lena was in the movie without even having to look, she'd watched it that many times as she was cutting it together -- was about a little kid and his father. They played in the park and ate hot dogs. The father helped him through the subway turnstiles. They went home at night and to school in the morning. Then one day the kid fell off some monkey bars that were about three times as tall as he was. He cried and screamed at his father, who was talking to some other parents and had his back turned. Eventually the kid stopped sobbing long enough to let his father pick him up and take him over to a bench, where he rolled up the boy's pant leg and checked out the bleeding skin.

The twist was that Tibby hadn't used footage of the same little kid and his father the whole way through. The kid playing in the park wore a red jacket. The kid eating a hot dog got mustard all down the front of his tiny black blazer. The kid on the subway was yet another little boy, one with a puffy haircut and high-top sneakers.

She was nearly asleep. She was lucid enough to hope that Lena was impressed, and then to watch the room go dark before her closed eyes and feel Lena crawl in bed in beside her.

  


**Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation. -Cherrie Moraga**

  


"That's nice of you to say," Tibby said the next morning over their breakfast of bagels, coffee, and more bagels when Lena told her how much she'd loved the movie. "It took forever to get the right clips. And I dropped my camcorder three times. Now the Firewire port is all bent up."

Lena had no idea what a Firewire port was. "It was amazing," she said, ripping off a section of a blueberry bagel. "I liked it a lot." She dipped the torn edge in the container of plain cream cheese sitting on the bed between them, and then asked, with what she hoped was elaborate nonchalance, "Does that mean you're not mad at Brian anymore?"

Tibby shoved her bagel in the cream cheese and came away with about half the container. "Yes and no," she said finally, when she'd finish wiping all the errant cream cheese off her chin. "I'm not mad at him. But I don't think it would ever be the same between us again, if we got back together."

Lena stared at Tibby and tried to pick her jaw up off the floor. "You mean you're not ... together?"

Tibby shook her head. "It was too ... no. I was one more thing he didn't need."

Lena winced. "He didn't say that, did he?" It wasn't the kind of thing she could imagine Brian saying to Tibby, ever.

Tibby shook her head again. "No, I did. And it was true."

"It was not," Lena said, partly out of loyalty, partly because even if it was true, it wasn't the kind of thing Tibby needed to tell herself right now.

"It was," Tibby said. "But thanks." She brushed honey wheat bagel crumbs off her hands into the trashcan, then looked around. "So. You came here for a change of scene. Where do you want to go? There are places we can go that are inside, where you can draw. Or we can go someplace outside, but it's awfully cold."

"Inside is fine," Lena said. "Are there many people around in your building?"

Tibby nodded. "Not too many, but a few."

"Then let's go down to the lobby," Lena suggested. She'd looked out the big windows last night, as she was signing in for the security guard. She figured that if no one was walking around inside the building, there was sure to be someone outside. It was New York, after all. If all else failed, she could draw the boxy lines of the bank building across the street. At the rate she was going, she could use some practice drawing straight lines.

"Okay," Tibby agreed. She tossed the remains of their breakfast in the trash, then gathered up her MacBook and the power adaptor. Lena wasn't sure how long Tibby felt like sitting around while she drew, or how long it might take her to produce a halfway-decent sketch, but she was grateful that Tibby appeared to be packing for a couple hours of entertainment.

In the lobby, Lena curled up sideways in a chair with her knees tucked up and her sketchpad resting on them. The only person in the lobby, at least at that precise moment, was the security guard, who looked bored and not very patient. Lena glanced out the window, then started with a rough outline of the building across the street and the ever-changing throng of people that moved back and forth in front of it. Heads down, hands in pockets. She drew quickly, trying to capture the outline of each person as he walked by. She tried to suggest motion and irritability and the windy winter cold.

After half an hour she dropped her pencil in her lap and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them she tried to look objectively at her sketch. It was okay. It was fine. It showed a building and people. But it was utterly flat and boring and uninspired. Lena had been drawing buildings and people since she was four years old. If she couldn't do better than this, her father was right; she didn't belong in art school.

She tried to remember some of the things Annik Marchand, her old teacher, had said the summer before her freshman year of college. Before this semester's utter and frustrating block, before she met Leo. " _I can tell this is the right approach for you -- portraits, long poses. I can see how deeply you respond to gestures and facial expressions._ "

Well, there was only one person sitting in a long pose near Lena right now. She was sitting just to the left of Lena's line of vision, her eyes glued to her MacBook screen and the corners of her mouth lifting up silently at something on the internet.

Lena cast a quick look over her shoulder at Tibby, just long enough to see the swish of her hair and the shape of her shoulders behind her computer. Then she picked up her pencil, and finally, after all these long months, the lines came easily.

She drew Tibby behind her computer, her fingers skating over the touchpad. She drew Tibby three and a half years ago, wearing the hated smock at Wallman's. She drew Tibby with Nicky and Katherine. She drew Tibby when she was little, only four or five, and then for good measure she added little shadowy figures for Bee, Carmen, and herself. She drew Tibby last night, stretched and luxuriating in slumber.

This was the opposite of Tibby's movie. She made a dozen sketches, of a girl at different ages and times and moods, but they were all Tibby.

She didn't put her pencil down until her eyes began to blur and Tibby set her MacBook on the floor, rubbing the thighs of her jeans. "Wow," she said, squeezing her eyes shut. "That thing gets hot after a while." She stretched her arms over her head. "How're you doing, Lenny? Can I see?"

"Sure," Lena said, feeling too euphoric to be self-conscious about her series of Tibby-drawings. She handed over the sketchpad and tried to cover up a yawn. "Don't look at that first one. It's awful."

"I think it's fine," Tibby said, and then she turned the page and went quiet. She flipped the paper eleven times. "They're -- wow, Lenny ..." There was a little rustle as she set the sketchpad down on her lap. "They're -- they're all me."

"Yeah." Lena looked down at her hands. The dizzy rush of drawing -- and of drawing something that she knew was finally good -- was fading, and shyness was settling back over her.

"They're really good," Tibby said. "I mean -- not that I'm really good or anything -- " She forced a laugh, and Lena remembered her own reaction to Leo's summer paintings. She gave Tibby, who looked thoroughly spooked, a reassuring smile. "I just -- I don't understand. How did you draw these? Were you watching me the whole time?"

Lena shook her head. "No. That's the funny part. I didn't even realize that I wanted to. They were just ... what came out."

"I like them a lot," Tibby said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she rested the heel of her hand against the last one and brushed her fingers over the fall of her charcoal self's hair. When she took her hand away, her fingers were smudged with gray.

  


**A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. -Mistinguett**

  


In celebration of Lena regaining her drawing prowess, they went out for Thai food at a restaurant two blocks from Tibby's building, then picked up some videos at the place where Tibby used to work. Tibby introduced Lena to Charlie Spondini, who was still working there as a manager. Lena got the impression that Charlie Spondini was not entirely thrilled to see Tibby, but he checked out the two movies -- two challenging, gritty, boring-looking movies that Tibby assured Lena she would love -- without complaint.

"He misses my great bedside manner with the customers," Tibby joked.

They made it through one of the movies before Tibby gave up, pleading exhaustion, which reminded Lena that she had to catch a bus back to Providence tomorrow afternoon. They both changed into pajamas and brushed their teeth, and Lena flipped through her sketchbook one more time while Tibby made a final round through her email and some various sites that she checked obsessively several times a day. The drawings made her feel better, not only because they were good but because she was sure she could make more. When she closed her eyes, instead of seeing the stilted curves of Leo's hands, which had given her so much trouble last August, she imagined her own fingers drawing the easy curls of Tibby's body.

They had a little more room in bed that night, now that Tibby wasn't stretched out across the middle of it.

"How's Effie doing at college?" Tibby asked.

Lena smiled, even though Tibby couldn't see her. "She still loves it. She went back early for an intersession. I think she really just didn't want to be at home for another three weeks."

"I don't blame her," Tibby said.

"What about you?" Lena asked. "How are your brother and sister?" Not that asking Tibby about Nicky and Katherine was like asking Lena about Effie. It was more like asking someone how their pet poodle was doing.

"They're good," Tibby said with a shrug that Lena could feel in the darkness. "Nicky's in kindergarten this year. I think Mom's looking forward to having them both in school next year."

"Is he going to Embrace, too?"

"Please," Tibby said, which meant no. "That's a little too radical for Mom and Dad and their new friends, you know."

Lena laughed. "But look how great you turned out."

"I did, didn't I?"

They were quiet for a moment, but they both knew that neither of them was falling asleep. Then Lena asked, "Do you miss the pants?"

Tibby paused. "Yes and no," she said, the same way she had when Lena asked her about Brian. "I miss all of you. I miss you every day. And I miss Bailey."

Lena made a little humming noise that she knew her friends referred to as her sympathy noise. She nodded. She didn't say anything; she waited for Tibby to go on.

"I always thought ..." Tibby's voice trailed off for a moment, and then she went on, with more confidence, "I always thought of Bailey as having set me up with everything I needed for a happy life. You guys. And Brian. She found Brian for me. But what she really loved were the pants. And she loved all of you, even though you and Bee never met her."

Lena had no idea where Tibby was going with this, but her friend's voice was getting stronger, so she let her continue.

"Lenny," Tibby said. "When I saw your drawings today ... I knew. You are more important to me than the pants. You are the _most_ important."

Lena's heart nearly hopped out of her chest when Tibby put her fingers against her ribs, but by the time Tibby's kiss settled against her mouth, it seemed like she had been waiting a lifetime for it.

  


**Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there  
**  
With open arms and open eyes  
-Incubus

  


In the morning, when Lena woke up, the weak sun was streaming through the window around the edge of the bent windowshade. She glanced around Tibby's room for a clock. It was a little before eight. Way too early to be awake, especially since she didn't have to catch a bus until 1:15 or 2:15.

With a quiet groan she crawled back under the covers, where she bumped into the bare skin of Tibby's neck.

Lena's heart hammered in her chest so loudly that she was surprised that Tibby didn't wake up. It pounded hard as she looked down at her sleeping friend. With the calloused edge of her thumb she stroked Tibby's neck, then dipped into the hollow right above her collarbone.

Over the years, Lena had fallen asleep and woken up a hundred times with her best friends. She knew the backs of Carmen's shoulders and the ends of Bee's hair as well as she knew their faces. But she had never imagined how many places there were to touch on Tibby's body -- the drop of her shoulder and the bony curve behind her ear and the peak of her hair. Lena could have drawn these places in her sleep, but to be able to touch them was a new and special privilege.

When she'd had her fill of touching, she tasted each curve with her mouth, the new and different ones that she hadn't gotten to last night.

She caught the 6:15 bus back to Providence.

  


**'You are old, Father William,' the young man said,  
**  
'And your hair has become very white;  
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --  
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'  
-Lewis Carroll

  


Lena had been hoping to see her sister over her spring break, but Effie's had been three weeks before hers. She told Lena that she and some friends, all with names like Maddie and Kelly and Katie and Ashley, were going to Myrtle Beach for a week.

"Won't it be kind of cold in March?" Lena tried to ask tactfully. Effie giggled a lot and told her that the temperature of the ocean was the least of their concerns.

Tibby's spring break had been the week before, and she'd spent it with Lena in Providence. Lena would have gone down to New York this week, but Tibby had another movie due -- "a three-minute movie," she groused, "how can you tell a story in three minutes?" -- so she decided to go home and relax for a week. Of course, being with her parents for a week might not be relaxing, but she could always go back to Providence early and visit Bee.

And it was relaxing, the first couple of days. She caught up on her sleep and ate food that didn't have salt as the primary ingredient. She also brought home a pile of her artwork to switch out. She wanted some of her art back, the good paintings from last year that she'd brought home at Thanksgiving in a fit of depression and shame. And these days, she was drawing faster than she could paint the drawings, so she wanted to save some of them for the summer.

Monday evening, she had cleared everything off her bed and was shuffling papers and canvases into different piles when she became aware of someone breathing behind her. She would have jumped in surprise if she hadn't heard both her mother and father's cars pull up a few minutes earlier.

She was surprised to see her father, though. He was standing in the doorway, holding his briefcase in front of him like a shield. "Hello," he said.

Lena tried a smile. "Hi, Dad," she said.

At first she thought he was looking out her windows, to the backyard and the pool that was covered for the winter, but then she realized he was looking at her bed, at her drawings. "May I ... come in?" he asked.

Surprised, she nodded.

He touched one pile, the drawings from last fall. "These are very nice," he said stiffly. He turned his attention to the other pile, the ones from last year that she was ready to take back with her. "But these ... these are better," he said, flipping through them as best as he could with one hand. "Even better." He paused at the full figure painting of Nona that she'd worked on all last summer, then at some of her drawings of Tibby from January. None of them showed anything particularly shocking, but Lena still felt her face heat up, and even more so when her father said, more softly, "These are lovely, Lena."

She felt that she was too old to jump into his arms for a hug, but she was pleased when he squeezed her shoulder, gently.

  


**Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be. -Clementine Paddleford**

  


"We have to tell them, right?" Tibby squeezed a bottle of Odwalla so hard that Lena thought it might go squirting all over the place. That would not be good. The whole idea behind breaking into Gilda's was that no one was supposed to know they had been there.

"We don't _have_ to," Lena mumbled back, recognizing a lie as surely as it fell from her lips. She glanced nervously at Carmen, who was setting up the bad '80s dance music. They'd forgotten the matches, so Bee was picking the lock on the office to look for a lighter. Lena and Tibby were standing in the corner across from Carmen, ostensibly to set out the Gummi Worms and Cheetos, but instead they were breaking out in so much collective blushing, she was surprised that the sprinkler system hadn't kicked on.

"What are you two doing?" Bee called as she came out of the office. She'd found a small book of paper matches, and she was carefully lighting the candles that were arranged in a small circle.

It had been so long since they had done this without the pants, they barely remembered what they'd done before them. They sat in a circle. Lena sat next to Tibby, with Carmen across from her. Bee was across from Tibby, bouncing so excitedly that Lena wasn't sure she'd be able to sit still long enough to talk, never mind eat the Gummi Worms.

For a moment none of them spoke. The music played and the camcorder hummed quietly as it recorded. Carmen crunched a Cheeto. Tibby shook the Odwalla like a maraca. Lena glared at her, and she put it down. "Sorry," she muttered.

"It feels different without the pants," Carmen said solemnly, voicing what they were all thinking. "It'll never be the same again."

"Yes, it will, Carma," Bee said. "The pants were only ours for a few years. But we will _always_ be us."

It was a pretty profound statement for Bridget. As Carmen looked like she was about to start sniffling, Tibby flashed a quick look at Lena. Lena gave her one right back.

Tibby cleared her throat. "Um," she said. "Bee, Carma. I have ... something to tell you."

"Is this about your movie?" Carmen asked. "Because I was just kidding when I said you should call it _Jackula_."

"Uh, no," Tibby said quietly. "It's not about the movie."

"Don't you have to tell Lena, too?" Bee asked, looking from Tibby to Lena and back again.

"No," Tibby said, her voice shrinking to a whisper. Her face was turning white, or maybe it was green -- Lena couldn't tell in the candlelight. "Lenny already knows."

"What is it?" Carmen asked.

"Um," Tibby whispered. She looked like she was about to throw up the three Cheetos she'd eaten. "Ah." She glanced at Lena.

Lena could not bear to see Tibby too terrified to charge into a situation the way she normally did, so she squeezed Tibby's hand and took over. "Carmen, Bee," she said, "Tibby and I ...", and then she ran out of words. It wasn't as though she hadn't tested them. She'd tried several phrases -- _hooking up, together, seeing each other_ \-- and none of them had seemed to work. They all sounded wrong, or at least, none of them sounded right, not for what she meant.

Carmen and Bridget were looking at her expectantly. Tibby looked like she might fall face-first into the bowl of Gummi Worms. Lena settled for, "Tibby and I are," and hoped that their joined hands and Tibby's nauseated expression would do the trick.

It must have, because Bee got that look she got when something was too big for her face, and Carmen looked first horrified, then incensed. "Y-y-you -- " she started, and then shot to her feet, kicking over the Gummi Worms. Her foot narrowly missed a candle, too. "But I thought you were -- "

"It's not like that," Tibby choked out, which wasn't helpful and anyway, Lena thought, it probably wasn't true. She didn't know what _it_ Tibby meant, but chances were that whatever _it_ Carmen was thinking, it probably _was_ like that.

"I do not believe this," Carmen said, backing up. She was all the way on the other side of the room now. Another few feet and she'd be out the window. Lena stood up, too. "How long have you two been -- you know?"

"About four months," Lena said. She touched Tibby's hair lightly, then walked across the room to Carmen.

"I don't believe this," Carmen said again. She crossed her arms and stared down at the worn wooden floorboards. "When were you going to tell us?"

"Come on, Carma," Bee said, getting to her feet as well. "They're telling us now."

"You know what I mean," Carmen said, glaring fiercely.

Lena stuck her hands in the pockets of her khakis. "I didn't want to tell you the way I told you about Leo," she said to Bee and Carmen. "I wanted to tell you in person. I thought that would be better."

"Well, you thought wrong," Carmen spat at the ground.

Lena felt her stomach jumping helplessly. She thought she'd been prepared for any kind of reaction from her best friends, but apparently she had not. She was at a total loss. In part, it was because she'd expected Tibby to take the lead. Tibby and her famous mouth usually did. But right now Tibby was hugging her knees on the floor, and Carmen was staring into a corner of the room.

Bee rubbed Lena's back awkwardly, but she looked like her two legs were trying to carry her in three different directions.

Then Lena thought of a couple things. She remembered Carmen's jealousy when both Bee and Lena decided to go to college in Providence, in the smallest state in the country. She remembered Tibby's shock and embarrassment when her mother became pregnant with Nicky, then Katherine, and the way Alice's life was quickly swallowed up by the two babies.

She knew that Tibby could not lose one of her best friends, and that Carmen believed she was losing two of hers.

So Lena walked over to Carmen, because Tibby looked mildly catatonic, and Carmen was the one who really needed her now. "Oh, Carma," she said, and put her arms around her friend. "It'll be okay." She started to say, "Nothing will change," but that would have been a lie, too. "It'll be different," she settled for, instead. "It'll be different, but it'll be okay. I promise."

"You can't make promises like that," Carmen said softly. "You don't _know_."

Lena thought of Carmen's parents, all four of them, with two divorces between them. She thought of Bee's mom and how long it had taken her father to even think of putting himself back together. She thought of Brian with his mother and stepfather, of her own grandmother Valia. Some part of her even thought of Kostos, and she knew, without acrimony or sadness, that her someday with him would never come.

She cleared her throat as Tibby walked up behind her and took her hand again. "You're right," Lena said. "But Bee's right too. We will always be us, even if us is me and Tibby."

Her voice caught, but Carmen was the first to cry, and Lena was the first to put her arms around her.

The camcorder rolled on, capturing it all.

**  
**

And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning. -Anton Chekhov

  


Finis.

 


End file.
